Should I use my personal Twitter account when starting a business?

A friend of mine is starting a business. It’s a modest operation at present and he’s the only employee. Should he create a new Twitter identity specifically for the business? Or should he switch the direction of his existing personal Twitter account?

My advice is to stick to the identity you’ve got. Here’s why:

1. Time. You’ve no time to spare when starting a business. It’s going to take twice as much out of your day to manage two (or more) accounts – coming up with “original content” for second (or even third and fourth) feeds can be taxing 😉

2. If your business identity is closely aligned with your personality and values (as, in this day and age, it should) then you might as well be one and the same account, rather than “pretend” to be two completely separate identities.

3. If you’d like your business account to be along the lines of friendly, irreverent, informal but useful (and you’d be living in the last century if you didn’t), then you might as well keep it as the (hopefully) loveable person you already are, rather than struggling to find an informal “voice” as a non-human entity.

4. Yes, you may well loose some followers if you bang on about your business, but if your followers generally like you and you inject a reasonable amount of humour into things, any you loose will be those of least value to you.

5. If you want to be transparent and open in your business (as we all do, right?), then Tweeting as yourself rather than a third party really makes the most sense.

UPDATE: Thanks Dave Briggs for his comment (below) recommending that you grab the Twitter handle (name) for your new business, just in case. You can either change your existing handle to reflect the new business name (not a problem if it’s available) or set up a separate account. You can re-direct this account to your existing Twitter until you have the resources to run two accounts.

More social media help for your new business

Photo: S Kaiser